If you look far back enough, the DMK patriarch has in some way touched most issues of significance in Tamil Nadu. The more recently embattled State song, the Tamizh Thai Vazhthu is no exception.
It was Mr. Karunanidhi who introduced the song, or rather a portion of a poem written by P. Sundaram Pillai, noted Tamil scholar in his play Manonmaniam . The Hindu ’s archives yielded a report, published in March 1970, recording that the then Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi, in his presentation of the State Awards for best Tamil films, artists and technicians, said the new ‘prayer song’ for Tamil Nadu would henceforth be the poem beginning with the line Neerarum Kadaludutha . However, only the first six lines of the two-stanza poem, extolling the virtues of the Tamil Goddess, was to be used.
Fittingly, that year's best music director awardee M.S.Viswanathan who scored the music for the song, and best female playback singer P. Susheela sang the song at the awards ceremony.
In April that year, MP Samar Guha raised a question in the Lok Sabha, questioning whether the Central Government's attention had been drawn to the fact that the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister had introduced a Tamil anthem to be sung before the national anthem. He also wondered if this “new practice did not run counter to the sovereign concept of the Indian nation.” The then Deputy Home Minister K.S. Ramaswamy denied that it would be so.
In 1978, the State government ordered that the song be sung as prayer in all schools before classes began in the morning.
Interestingly, as late as in March this year, the Madras High Court dismissed a PIL that sought a direction to the State government to issue an executive order stating that only the unedited version of the Tamil Thai Vazhthu poem should be used. Earlier in the year, there was a fair bit of hornets nest stir about the junior pontiff of the Sankara Mutt not standing during a rendition of the song, and about not playing it in a function in IIT Madras.
